Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/08/03

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Subject: [Leica] Film snobs and Tri-X
From: dorysrus at mindspring.com (Don Dory)
Date: Tue Aug 3 05:38:39 2004

Peter,
Neopan 400 is a modern T-grain like film.  Its characteristic curve is
very straight so there is a lot of information in very thin parts of the
negative.  Likewise, even a fairly dense negative has a lot of
information there.

Tri-X has a pronounced S shaped curve which actually works to your
advantage in bright situations as the exposure response is non linear in
the highlights.  The curve is one of the reasons Tri-X has such
wonderful midtones.

With Neopan 400 I get very fine grain, great shadows, none of the
hassles of T-max and the same midtones as I could get from Tri-x with a
little curves work in PS.

If you are getting the results you want with Tri-X then stay with it,
the differences are not worth learning another film.

Don
dorysrus@mindspring.com



-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+dorysrus=mindspring.com@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+dorysrus=mindspring.com@leica-users.org] On Behalf
Of Peter Klein
Sent: Monday, August 02, 2004 10:07 PM
To: lug@leica-users.org
Subject: Re: [Leica] Film snobs and Tri-X

Could someone describe in a nutshell the difference between Tri-X and 
Neopan 400?  I've heard that Neopan has a bit finer grain.  But what
about 
tonal rendition, shadow vs. highlight detail, contrast, etc.?

I love Neopan 1600 when it's really dark.  But I've always gravitated to

Tri-X for the normal available light stuff.  I've tried Neopan 400 a
couple 
of times, but not enough to really understand the differences.  And the 
Neopan 400 was developed in D76 1:1, whereas my Tri-X is usually done in

Xtol, so I was comparing apples and oranges.

(and then of course there's T400CN and its successors, which are another

can of worms entirely.  Great for convenience, a beautiful long-scale
tonal 
range, and very little grain when the shadows are not too dark.  But it 
gets scratched if you so much as look at it harshly, and deep shadows
are 
mud and grain unless you rate it at 250 or 200. )

--Peter
Seattle, WA

At 02:08 PM 8/2/04 -0700, Slobodan wrote:
>You can call me a snob also, but I prefer T-max for 120 and Neopan for
35mm.
>S. Dimitrov


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In reply to: Message from pklein at 2alpha.net (Peter Klein) ([Leica] Film snobs and Tri-X)